Sunday, 6 September 2009

The Problem with H2

You can't pick your family. But you can pick your nose.

I have seen every Rob Zombie film. That's not a badge of honour, just a statement of fact. Has the man improved any over the years? I don't think so. Though H2 is significantly better written than House of 1000 Corpses, it still suffers from the same poor lighting and bad editing that has plagued all of Zombie's films.

I'm a fan of Halloween. It's a great movie and can still scare audiences 30 years later. Zombie's re-visioning of the classic story is drastically different from John Carpenter's original. Where Carpenter was careful to build suspense, Zombie went for the jump scares. Where Carpenter focused on his victims, Zombie told the story from the killer's point of view. These were complaints I lodged after seeing Rob Zombie's Halloween. Now, after having seen H2, I've changed my tune. Somewhat.

I had a hard time finding stills from the movie.

H2 is not terrible. In fact, it's a good deal better than his previous film. Its focus is more evenly split between Michael Meyers, Dr. Loomis, and Lori Strode, and the movie explores the relationship between Michael and Lori. H2 is a sequel in every way, it has the same look and feel as the first and furthers the story, albeit in strange and questionable ways.

Because I didn't hate H2 nearly as much as I thought I would, I figured there has to be a reason why. After much soul searching (I slept on it), I've decided that H2 is a passable movie in its own right. It tells the story of a lunatic murderer who kills his way across Illinois, driven by visions of his dead mother, to find his sister. It's not a bad story. But it suffers from being a Halloween film. Were H2 divorced from the Halloween franchise, were it a separate and independent film I can't say it would have been any better, but it certainly wouldn't have been any worse.